We reached Elephant Island this morning to find it shrouded in snow and fog and surrounded by a rough, undulating sea. This is by no means unusual, and by looking at a map you can see that this is one of the most exposed pieces of land in the Southern Ocean. It is a truly hostile location, and to think that is was used as a refuge by the crew of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance is hard to imagine.
Aside from its brutal weather conditions, the island is largely made up of jagged peaks that form steep cliffs on meeting the ocean, with a number of glaciers cutting between them and into the sea. This creates a coastline with very few accessible landings, as we saw. Gradually we rounded the island and reached Point Wild, where the crew of Endurance ultimately settled before sending a small team to South Georgia for help. Point Wild is a barren, unforgiving spit of rock that juts out from the base of a cliff, and was being hammered by large waves as our ship maneuvered in for a closer look. To think that this location was deemed preferable as a campsite is a testament to the lack of options available at the time, and the level of desperation felt by the men of Endurance.
After taking in the spectacle of Point Wild and its surrounding landscape, we set out to sea along the same route as Shackleton and his five colleagues on the James Caird took almost a century ago. Here we had what will become some of our last views of large icebergs as we head north, amidst an escort of fin and humpback whales occasionally surfacing in amongst the swell. This appropriately marks the transition from the ice clad Antarctic continent, to the rich sea and land of South Georgia. And so begins our voyage to one of the most incredible places on Earth.
